Storytelling Workshop

As much as writing can be a pretty lonely craft, creating worlds in one's head or chewing on ideas, there is equal beauty and urgency in pouring fuel onto the smoldering hearts of the next generation of creatives. Someone poured into the younger me, several someones. 

So, when an invitation to speak to high schoolers in the performing arts crash-landed in one of my Whatsapp chats, I accepted, despite a conflicting appointment, despite the horrors of needle-in-a-hay-stack parking in town and despite the sour breath of a long workweek breathing down my neck. 

I entered Philipsburg Culture Center, backstage with a few late comers, crossed the stage and slinked down into a bright red theatre chair in the first row. The flat-chested black walls stood overhead like silent African guards, protecting the memory and shadows of past performances. This was sacred ground. The cool air brushed aside my elevated body heat and in minutes it felt as if my brisk walk from the University didn't even happen. 

I sat next to my host. The Head of the Culture Department, one of my someones, was talking to the savvy group of uniformed youths, who found strength in numbers and comfort in earbuds. The main stage had appropriately become the backdrop and the ascending staircase between the audience had become the stage. The gap was enough to talk across from one generation to the next. 

What is there to say about story telling? It hadn't dawn on my yet. I listened to the Head of the Culture Department stressed that shyness has no place in show business and one should be bold in telling our stories. I listened intently still to the stories in my mental library and thumbed through Tangle to select the Genesis story of me , Spitfire, a story of teens, It is Written and a story of us, Airborne. In the activities, they became books, and movies and songs and heart and we celebrated those creative embryos with laughter, questions and collective attentiveness. In that moment in the heart of a busy Caribbean capital, we, what we felt, what we've experienced mattered more than Netflix, Youtube, and video games.  In that moment we set aside the shyness and believed in our uniqueness. After attempting to spell my stage name, two tenacious young women walked away with a copy of Tangle. 

In the end, walking back to the university in the company of one of my someones, I wondered if we were able to set a few creative hearts ablaze.

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